My Tango With Barbara Strozzi (7 page)

She didn’t turn up that evening so I phoned her.

‘Barbara,’ I said, ‘it’s me.’

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘I was just about to go out.’

‘Oh.’ Go out where? With whom? Mustn’t ask. ‘I thought we might try some private tango tuition.’

‘What for?’

‘So we could concentrate on getting beyond the beginners’ stage.’

‘Why?’ She didn’t sound like the woman who’d slept next to me last night.

‘I think it would feel good to tango well, don’t you?’

‘What does it cost?’ As if she’d never smothered me with kisses and thrown up in my bathroom.

‘Forty pounds an hour.’

‘I can’t spend twenty pounds on a tango lesson.’

‘No, no, this is my treat.’

‘I don’t want you to spend forty pounds on a lesson for us either.’ Her voice was tapping its foot, eager to put down the phone.

‘Why not?’ I said. ‘It’s no big deal, it’s less than dinner for two at any decent restaurant.’

‘It’s not the same thing and you know it. Listen, I have to go.’

I could hear in her voice that I wasn’t going to see her for a while. Was mine the sensitivity of a natural loser? I had an upcoming workshop to do at Morley College so I moved my mind to that and made my Barbara thoughts wait until I could give them my full attention. Of course they kept hammering on the door but I told myself I’d have to get used to that.

I wasn’t surprised when Brian Adderley turned up at the Lichtheim studio for a check-up; that was a regular thing with their clients. Sometimes I used to wonder what I’d say when I saw him again. The time we’d spent together wasn’t the kind of thing you forget, and lying in bed beside Troy I’d find myself remembering nights with Brian.

So there he was. He looked very well and very prosperous. Not that he was fashionably dressed – he was as scruffy as ever – but he looked as if he could buy anything without asking the price first. ‘You look to be in good shape,’ he said, and kissed me on the cheeks.

‘So do you,’ I said, and after Karl did the check-up Brian and I went to The Blue Posts and sank a couple of pints. ‘I still owe you some Dubai money,’ he said.

‘No, you don’t. I didn’t mind posing for the paintings but I really couldn’t square it with Artemisia if I took money for it.’

‘You’ve got fancy scruples,’ he said.

‘Everybody draws the line somewhere, I think.’

‘Even I. Would you believe that since you left I haven’t been with any other woman?’

‘No, I wouldn’t.’

‘All right, I didn’t actually go cold turkey but it was like being alone. Can you believe that?’

‘Almost. At least it’s a nice compliment.’

‘So are you with anyone now?’

‘I’m married but I’m not with my husband any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘One beating was enough.’

‘How could you marry a man stupid enough to beat you?’

‘I’m not very clever myself. You may have noticed.’

‘You’ve got someone else?’

‘Sort of. It’s too soon to say.’

‘Who is he?’

‘No one you know. He’s a writer.’

‘What’s his name?’

‘Phil Ockerman.’

‘The guy who wrote
Hope of a Tree
?’

‘Have you read it?’

‘Yes, and it was real crap. He uses words well enough but it was really just a put-together thing trying to pass for a novel. Have
you
read it?’

‘No. How are things between you and your wife?’

‘We’re divorced. She’s got the house and the kids and
a lot of money and I’ve moved here. I’ve got a house in Cheyne Walk.’

‘You must have struck it rich.’

‘Von Augenblick doesn’t only have contacts in Dubai, he’s got the whole Middle East pretty well covered, and Judith & Co. go down a bomb with his clientele.’

We were quiet for a while, then a white-haired woman nearby leaned our way and said, ‘Actually,
Hope of a Tree
had quite a few good things in it. You can’t expect strong plots from Ockerman, his novels are mainly character-driven.’ Her face might not have been beautiful when she was young but looked very classy now and there was something in her voice – it was low and husky – that made me think she must have had an exciting past and a lot of lovers. I’d noticed her when she came in; she was taller than I and had a long slim black velvet bag slung from her shoulder. It knocked against the table when she sat down and it didn’t sound like an umbrella. She saw me looking at it and slid it partly out of the bag. It was a baseball bat. I thought of
The Rainmaker
and I couldn’t help smiling. Sometimes it’s nothing but baseball bats. A sign?

‘A Louisville Slugger,’ she said. ‘His name is Irv.’

‘“His”, not “Its”,’ said Brian. ‘Has that bat got a history?’

‘It has,’ she said. ‘But you wouldn’t believe it. I wouldn’t have believed it myself if I didn’t know that form and emptiness are the same.’

‘Not a lot of people know that,’ Brian said. ‘What’re you drinking? You need a refill.’

‘Directors,’ she said. ‘But just a half please. Vodka used to be my tipple but the ravages of time forced me to switch to beer, and even that puts me to sleep if I’m not careful.’

Brian went to the bar and got refills for all of us, then he said to the woman with the baseball bat, ‘Tell us the story, please. I’m Brian Adderley. This is Bertha Strunk.’

‘Hi,’ she said. ‘My name is Grace Kowalski. The bat is named after a friend who’s no longer with us. Some years back he and I and a few others were involved in some very strange goings-on. Do you believe in ghosts?’

‘Yes,’ said Brian.

‘Sometimes,’ I said.

‘I hang out with more ghosts than I do with live people,’ said Grace.

‘That’s part of getting old, I guess,’ said Brian.

‘It sure is,’ said Grace. ‘Do you believe in vampires?’

‘Metaphorically or literally?’ said Brian.

‘The kind that actually suck blood,’ said Grace.

‘Not yet,’ said Brian.

‘Likewise,’ I said.

‘Just asking,’ said Grace.

‘Do you?’ I said.

‘Takes all kinds,’ said Grace. ‘What do you do?’ she asked me.

‘I paint eyeballs for artificial eyes,’ I said.

‘And you?’ she said to Brian.

‘I’m a painter,’ he said. ‘Pictures on canvas. Are you retired?’

‘Not yet,’ said Grace. ‘I make jewellery and I sell it in my shop, All That Glisters, just up the street.’

I said, ‘I pass it every day on my way to work.’

‘Small world,’ said Grace. ‘No unknown places any more. Except perhaps in people.’

‘I’d like to do a portrait of you,’ said Brian. ‘Will you pose for me?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Grace. ‘But I don’t do nudity unless it’s essential to the plot.’

‘Sometimes a plot can take you unawares,’ said Brian, and raised his glass to her. He’ll flirt with whatever female comes into his field of vision. He and Grace exchanged phone numbers and Brian and I said goodbye and got up to leave.

‘See you,’ said Grace. ‘Have a good whatever.’

It was twilight when we came out into Berwick Street. ‘Where to?’ said Brian.

‘Cheyne Walk?’ I said.

‘Bertha, you read my mind,’ he said. He hailed a cab and off we went. Hearing him call me Bertha made me think of Phil with a little twinge of guilt. Not a big twinge, just a little one. Phil and I still didn’t really know where we were with each other, but with Brian I knew exactly where we were and I was comfortable with it. No commitment, no problems, just a good time in bed in a beautiful house. Was I being amoral? Well,
you know what they say: there are parts of the human body that have no conscience.

But the part of my body that
has
got a conscience is my brain. And lying there beside Brian I was feeling guilty about what I’d done and hadn’t done with my life so far. Here I was, thirty-seven years old and painting artificial eyes. Back when Brian was my teacher he’d told me to loosen up and I’d done that, but not on canvas. Then my attempts to develop as an artist had gradually faded away while my talents as a mistress improved all the time. Was it too late to find out if I could be any kind of a painter other than an eyeball one? On the other hand, if I’d had any real talent I’d have done something with it by now. It’s not just a matter of talent – you’ve got to have the drive and the character to do something with it, whether it’s painting, snooker, or tennis. Brian was asleep and snoring. ‘Cheryl,’ he mumbled. That wasn’t his wife’s name.

After a while I fell asleep and dreamt that Grace Kowalski offered to lend me her bat. ‘He ain’t heavy,’ she said. ‘He’s my Irving.’ But it
was
heavy, I could hardly lift it. I woke up and the room wasn’t as dark as it had been. There were framed sketches on the wall. Me, nude. No clothes but I hadn’t felt as naked when I posed as I did now.

She was with another man; that was a certainty. It was as if I could feel his weight on her as he enjoyed what was now denied to me. I ground my teeth and tried to move my mind elsewhere. Without much success.

I could see a space without Barbara stretching out in front of me for miles and miles: a desert. And I was two vast and trunkless legs of stone standing in the middle of it with my shattered visage, half-sunk, lying nearby. Well, that’s how it is sometimes: boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away. Deal with it.

Ordinarily I get through each day by finding things to look forward to, like a mountain climber moving from one handhold to the next: breakfast;
The Times
; the post; scanning the TV schedule and setting the timer to record films that look promising; sending and answering e-mails; lunch and the first beer of the day; a few pages of Elizabeth Gaskell with my sandwich; then a nap. In between I put in some time staring at
The Scent of Water
,
my lonesome title with no first line under it. That part of the day I haven’t really been looking forward to, and I do it again in the evening. And there are the classes I teach at Morley and the private workshops that use up three afternoons and two evenings every week.

If I could follow the advice I give my students I might possibly achieve even a whole first paragraph. I draw on haiku heavily for this. A common complaint is, ‘When I have a blank sheet of paper in front of me I feel lost.’ For this I have committed to memory lines by Ryusui:

Mayoigo no
naku naku tsukamu
hotaru kana

The lost child,
crying, crying, but still
catching the fireflies.

A blank sheet of paper is a very dark night in which we lost children can’t help crying, I tell them. The thing is to keep catching fireflies. I constantly remind myself of that but this seems not to be a firefly season.

I listened to the first track of the
Enigma Variations;
the theme came out of a distant silence, veiled and mysterious, then it grew and unfolded, always in the light and shadow of the larger unplayed theme. OK, I have no right to expect anything but the unfolding. Maybe there’s nothing in it for me. That’s life, yes?

I cursed myself for being so dependent on Barbara. Lots of men get through life without a woman; why couldn’t I? Also, this might not be a permanent condition – she might be back. But I didn’t like being kept dangling like this. It was cold, it was grey, it was raining. Good. I went to the National Gallery. I stood on the porch for a few minutes looking down on Trafalgar Square. Spray from the fountains drifting in the rain. Red sightseeing buses. Nelson on his column, secure in his place above it all. That’s the way to do it, I thought, and went inside.

I’m a heavy user of the National Gallery. Depending on what condition my condition is in I usually know what I need for my fix. Sometimes it’s Claude, other times de Hooch or maybe van Hoogstraten’s peepshow or the van de Veldes marine paintings. But today I didn’t know what would do it for me.

I was drifting from one room to another when I paused in Room 41 at the Daumier that shows Don Quixote on Rosinante charging a flock of sheep while Sancho on Dapple quenches his thirst from a gourd. Daumier didn’t do any large paintings – they’re all medium-sized to small. This one was 40 x 64 centimetres and it was a sketch, not a finished picture. But the thing about Daumier is that all of his pictures, regardless of size, are
big
. And his sketches are usually the biggest of all because they’re the freeest and the quickly done chiaroscuro is nothing short of metaphysical.

I was thinking about Don Quixote and Sancho when a tall young woman took up a position a foot or two away. Her close attention to the Daumier already marked her as someone to be reckoned with and her looks did nothing to dispel that impression. She stood there shaking her head a little and moving her lips, then she took a pad of music paper from her rucksack, sat down on the floor, and began to fill the staves with notes and words.

‘Does this happen often with you?’ I said.

She held up a finger to pause me while she finished a bar. ‘All the time,’ she said.

‘Not only with Don Quixote or Daumier, then?’

‘I like Cervantes and Daumier both – this painting is what got me going just now but it’s not specifically a Don Quixote song.’ A slight South African accent.

‘Can you say what it’s about?’

‘Yes, it’s about being true to your craziness.’

‘Will you have a coffee with me when you’re ready to stand up?’

She got up from her cross-legged position without using her hands. ‘I’m ready now, but it’ll have to be a fast coffee because I’m due in Soho in three quarters of an hour.’

‘The cafeteria won’t be crowded now, so we can get one there quickly. Are you here for a visit?’ I said as we walked towards the Sainsbury Wing.

‘Three weeks,’ she said, ‘mostly talking to record company execs. Then I go back to Cape Town.’

‘Have you got a contract?’

‘My agent’s working on it. Are you American?’

‘Yes, but I’ve been living here for the last twelve years.’ By this time we were sitting at a table having our coffee and I was able to study her closely. Brown hair which she wore long and straight; blue eyes; large nose; wide mouth; high forehead. Not exactly a beauty but the overall effect was impressive. She reminded me of champion athletes I’d seen on TV. She had the look of a winner and that made her face add up to more than the sum of its parts.